I’ve been listening to a number of Catholic podcasts and not been too overly impressed. Most of them are good enough–a person chatting about this and that or some interviews and conversations. This is all well and good, but there is so much more potential.

My first degree way back in my college days was in Speech and English. I did a fair bit of acting and directing plays and so forth, and with the ease of production with podcasts it has become clear how much more potential there is in this new medium.

My first podcast was Triumphs and Tragedies–my 23 part series on church history–basically one episode per century. I did the research, wrote up an outline and then winged it. It was received well enough and is now archived here on the blog under the “podcast” section. Then Stories of the Unexpected is a channel I developed to simply tell stories of the paranormal, the miraculous and marvel0us. I record and post these as they occur to me.

Then I got the idea of recording some fairytales–some classics and some I wrote years ago when I was a school chaplain. True Fairytales is the result. Taking the voices and adding some literary and dramatic elements led me to a project that hearkened back to my speech training. We regularly had the task of abridging major works, memorizing them and delivering them vocally. This can be done easily enough with classic books that are in the public domain.

So I took Hilaire Bell0c’s Characters of the Reformation, cut it accordingly, assumed a brusque, brisk, Bellocian voice and began the podcast series. At certain points in the podcast I’ll switch from the Belloc voice back to myself to comment and add observations. It’s been fun to do and it gives listeners a chance to tap into a classic book. The result is a kind of podcast-audio book.

Spurred on by this, for a Lent offering I decided to read aloud my book The Gargoyle Code. This is a perfect book to do in this way because the letters from the demon Slubgrip allow me to play the part and dramatize the book making it come alive for listeners. This series starts today. You can listen to a free sample here.

I’m excited by these possibilities and have a few more projects in the pipeline.

We’re almost done with Belloc’s Characters of the Reformation . I’ll be following this with a chapter by chapter discussion of John Allen’s Future Church. I’ll also be reading a selection of poems from Joseph Pearce’s Poems Every Catholic Should Know. The poems will be prefaced by a short explanation of the poem and a brief biography of the poet. As they are being produced most of the podcasts are published first on the blog for Donor Subscribers, then free of charge at BreadBox media for the general public. After they are produced they remain at BreadBox for a few weeks before being taken down and archived here on the blog.

I’m also busy writing the script for Renegade Priest — podcast first person fiction…the story of Fr Max Fisher–a priest who goes rogue.

If you think these podcasts are a good idea, I encourage you to join in, listen to them and share them with others. While I try to make them all free, they are not free to produce. I pay a guy to help edit some of them, the technology requires subscriptions to software systems and I need to pay for hosting, design, maintenance and promotion of the blog-website.

Some of the other Catholic media providers have donors with deep pockets, a dedicated 501c3 charity to take large donations, a staff of publicity people, editors, designers etc etc.

Here it’s still just a guy with a blog for a hobby doing the best he can.

If you can be a Donor Subscriber please check it out. Go here.

PS: There’s a special offer during the month of March. New Premium Level Donor Subscribers may request a free copy of one of my books.